What role does money play in the continuing struggle for biblical faithfulness in the Anglican Communion? The sharp warning from Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 6:24) about the impossibility of serving both God and Mammon alerts us to the reality that money can become a spiritual power when it seduces us into materialism. Rather than being used in the service of God, it can become a god.
But this power of money does not normally manifest itself in a simple and unsubtle appeal to greed. I think, for instance, of an African bishop who recently wrote to me declining an invitation to attend a GAFCON event in favour of one sponsored by a wealthy US revisionist parish because he felt the need to ‘protect his diocese’. Or of the English Anglican Evangelical bishop who once accused me of asking an African bishop to ‘cause his people much suffering’ simply because I alerted him to the heterodox views of the bishop who led their English link diocese.
There are bishops in Africa and other parts of the world who face crises beyond anything those of us in the West are likely to face and it is not for us to be judgemental. But dire human need can be exploited and it does not render spiritual discernment redundant. In August, I was privileged to join a dozen courageous and godly leaders, including ten diocesan bishops and two former Primates, as they launched the Tanzanian Branch of GAFCON.
